There are times in my life that I am asking myself the questions, “What’s within me?

” or “Is this I, the

one that I manifest to others? My body’s action?”. Hence, at times, I am able to arrive on many speculations
that, sometimes, either leads me to believe to myself, or the other way around – to have doubt on my
capabilities. However, I just lately realized – only during our discussion of this particular topic, that those
questions shouldn’t be answered separately, for these are inseparable; one answers the another. The first
question, “What’s within me?” is already answered by the second question – “Is this I…?”, because what I
manifest is from the one that is within me, and the one that is within me is I, me, and nothing else’s.
There are a lot of philosophers who tackled about this topic – Human Person as an Embodied Spirit.
However, we all know that philosophies and notations of the philosophers have no really certain origin, nor
sources. Every philosophy is a product of either negation or adaptation of other philosophy. In this topic, I will
be dealing with the seven discussed philosophers, namely: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas
Aquinas, Rene Descartes, Gabriel Marcel, and Karol Wojtyla.
According to Plato, “Man is his soul”, for him man’s soul is more vital and profound, for here comes all
the actions that a man is doing. Plato came-up to his concept that having the body is a mere imprisonment of a
pure and free soul. Here, we can clearly see that for Plato, soul is really the one that is more important than the
body; for he only see the body as the bad winged horse in his concept of charioteer, and a mere prison of the
free and pure soul which he described as the good winged horse in his concept of the charioteer.
For, Aristotle, man is the whole of his body and soul. Meaning, man is consisting of body and soul, and
for him these two are inseparable to each other. Aristotle has the concept of the matter and form – which later
on adapted by other philosophers, body being the matter, and soul being the form. Aristotle stated that these two
are dependent to each other, thus, one cannot be recognized nor be manifested without the other. Soul is being
manifested through the body, and the body acts and is being recognized because of the soul. From this, we can
clearly see that these two are really dependent to each other.
In the notation of Augustine, “Man can be divided into body and soul”, this seems impossible, here I
was confused of how a body can be separated from the soul. I had read that X cannot be X without its being
present in the Y. However, as I think about it, I realized, perhaps, the idea of Augustine is somehow similar to
that of Plato, maybe for Augustine he perceives either one of the body or soul as more important and profound
than the other.
For Thomas Aquinas, his notation of this topic is somehow similar with the notation of Aristotle.
However, Aquinas uses the words existence and essence, body as the existence, and the soul as the essence.
Here, Aquinas also stated that the existence cannot be separated from essence, for the essence fulfills the
existence, same through with the existence to essence. Thereby, it is clear that, the concept of Aristotle and
Aquinas are similar and supporting each other.
On the concept of Rene Descartes, a philosopher who said that as rational being we must doubt in order
for us to say that we are thinking, thus, we exist. For me this was once a complicated topic to deal with.
Descartes at first, he stated a distinction between body and soul. However, at his latter meditation, he also said
that man’s body and soul are in real unity. Man is composed of body and soul, and this body and soul is united
and are really connected to each other, what a soul connotes it is being manifested through the body.
For Gabriel Marcel, a French philosopher who negates the idea of Descartes, a human person is his
body. Just for example, if a human person is being hurt physically, he/she will not say “My body hurts”, but “I
am being hurt”. There, we can say that the idea of Marcel is similar with the idea of the other preceding
philosophers, like Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes.
On Karol Wojtyla’s concept of human person, his concept there was also somehow similar to the
concepts of Aristotle and Aquinas. However, Wojtyla uses the word soma for the body and psyche for the soul.
As what I have said, this concept is somehow similar to the concept of the two said preceding philosophers.
Therefore, soma and psyche are also inseparable for one fulfills the another. Soma is only a mere cadaver
without the psyche, and psyche is impotent without the soma. In Wojtyla’s book, The Acting Person,
specifically in his notation of self-possession and self-governance, he stated there that, man possesses himself;
he controls it, and man is in the possession of himself; he owns it. Thus, he concluded that in every action, the
actor, which is the man is all responsible to this action, consequently, the action will bounce to the doer.
Having all these philosophers in order for us to understand this sophisticating topic, is really a huge
help. Although, some of the notations at first were complicated and confusing, as had continued the different
insights of the other philosophers about this topic, I gradually understood how a man acts, and how a man
becomes responsible on every action he does. This topic can really help a person to shape him/herself by being
fully aware of what’s within him/herself. For what’s within us is being manifested by us, and through our
manifestation, we are being perceived and recognized. As what our spiritual teachers/directors are always
saying, “Feed not your body, but your soul”.